At a glance

Anti-Money Laundering Specialists for a major UK bank

The client

The client was a major UK corporate and retail bank with a national portfolio of major corporates, SMEs, charities and high street retail customers.

The challenge

Our client had identified an urgent need for two short term projects. The first need was to recruit a team to investigate thoroughly a backlog of Suspicious Activity Reports with a view to disclosing where appropriate to the NCA. The second was to rapidly de-risk identified customers, which required a team of Enhanced Due Diligence experts who could assist the de-risking of customers. Finally, there was a need for a team of AML specific BAs.

After detailing to the bank our unique end-to-end methodology and the effectiveness of our solution, we were appointed the exclusive supplier of this vital project.

The solution

BrightPool identified that the bank's past struggles to recruit quickly were partly caused by its long screening and on-boarding process which, in this situation, was not fit for purpose.

A new process was implemented with the hiring managers, allowing HR and on-boarding to retain full visibility without compromising the necessary speed of the project. This new process allowed candidates to be identified, assessed, offered, compliance screened and started at the bank within four weeks against a BAU recruitment process which would typically take eight to ten weeks.

On receipt of the project BrightPool immediately began the task of identifying suitable candidates with a blended solution: utilising our existing network, advertising for new candidates and approaching potential candidates through social media. Many of the candidates we provided were for ‘post-SAR’ full AML investigations with a proportion coming from sources outside of Financial Services, such as the NCA. Our approach allowed us to have an initial tranche of candidates with a pipeline which could then be topped up as required.

To maximise the efficiency of the interview process we created the following candidate journey:

Successful candidates were then invited to our on-site assessment centres where they were interviewed by one of our consultants using a technical questionnaire, and then completed a case study testing their AML thought process.

If candidates were successful with the initial two stages they were interviewed by one of the bank’s AML specialists to assess their thought process, technical knowledge of AML and team fit.

This approach both ensured candidates were fully tested, allowing for offers to be made at on the day. Our approach combined with thorough pre-screening resulted in a very high conversion rate of interviews to successful outcomes, which served to further improve the efficiency of the programme.

The results

As a result of the success in the deployment of these two AML teams, we were referred to support the client on-boarding team with a similar problem.

Our ability to source and pre-screen suitable candidates enabled the client to take a risk-based approach to recruiting suitable candidates.

Contractors were onboarded without the need for a client interview, saving the client valuable time and resource. The results speak for themselves with 87.5 % of contractors who were recruited in this method being retained.

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